


our sisters hold our mirrors

by Lady Mondegreen (larkgrace)



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Gen, LOSERS DO THE FRIENDSHIP, sort of a coda to bllb, sssshhhh i just want ronan and blue to be friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-21 16:37:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3699404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/larkgrace/pseuds/Lady%20Mondegreen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Both within the family and without, our sisters hold up our mirrors: our images of who we are and who we can dare to be." -Elizabeth Fishel</p><p>Ronan and Blue, after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	our sisters hold our mirrors

**Author's Note:**

> overlaps the end of/set immediately after blue lily, lily blue. i added some minor tweaks to the canon re: blue's injuries.
> 
> this basically has no plot and it's super rambly but i needed an excuse for ronan and blue to Do The Friendship.

When Ronan re-enters the valley of bones accompanied by one Irish Elk and notably lacking one Blue Sargent, he thinks Gansey’s eyes are going to pop out of his head.

“Chill, she found another way out,” Ronan says before Gansey can get a word out. “She’s fine.”

“Why didn’t you go with her?” Gansey sputters. Adam turns his back to Ronan, jaw clenched, and digs his fingertips into the rock wall.

“Because I couldn’t,” Ronan says. “Ask Parrish. You can feel it, right?”

Slowly, Adam’s hand relaxes. “He’s right,” Adam says, “it’s like there’s a barrier further on. Not really a _physical_ barrier, but—we can’t cross it. It’s the same mirror magic that made Neeve vanish and—“ he cuts off, and swallows visibly. “And killed Persephone.”

“And you let Blue walk straight into it?” Gansey yelps.

“Nobody _lets_ Sargent do anything,” Ronan reminds him. “Doesn’t matter. The mirror bullshit can’t touch her. We, on the other hand, need to get the fuck out of here. The cave system’s unstable since we let the entire goddamn prehistoric zoo parade through here.”

Gansey takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and nods.

Climbing up the valley’s slope is slow and precarious work, thanks to the loose rock sliding under their feet, so they’re still close enough to the bottom to feel the rumble and see the dust as the underground lake’s cavern collapses.

Adam shouts “Blue!” and Gansey lets out a moan, biting down on his own thumb.

“Come on,” Ronan says, and kicks some gravel in their general direction. “We need to get out of here.”

They all slip and cut their hands several times climbing out of the pit, their climbing getting sloppy as they rush. When they emerge from the cave, fog has settled over Cabeswater, chilling Ronan through his jacket.

“Where did Blue’s exit come out?” Gansey asks, scanning the trees desperately.

Ronan shrugs stiffly. “Fuck if I know. Split up and start yelling. Stay within earshot of the cave, it won’t do us any good to lose each other.” Then he whistles for Chainsaw, who comes swooping from the treetops with a nightmare screech. “Go get Calla,” he tells her, and Chainsaw, his fucking beautiful bird, tears off into the night.

“Blue!” Adam shouts, striding through the trees in the general direction of Cabeswater’s entrance. Gansey picks another patch of trees, and Ronan heads toward the distant mountains. He makes a wide loop, and when Gansey’s distant voice starts to fade, he heads back to the cave just as Calla arrives, face pale and drawn.

“Nothing,” Calla says. It’s not a question. Ronan doesn’t answer, just goes to walk the same loop again.

He loses track of time—easy to do, since his only markers are his occasional run-ins with Adam or Gansey at the cave of ravens, looking increasingly worried, and the slow freeze of his fingertips.

Finally, as he loses track of Calla’s voice and starts to turn back, he hears a distant echo, too far away to discern words. Maybe Calla’s shouts echoing off the rock faces. He stands perfectly still for a moment, and the words solidify into a hoarse cry of “…Adam? Ronan? _Gansey!”_

“Sargent?” he calls.

“Ronan!” Blue shouts back.

“Here!” he yells. Keeps shouting, as the crash of Adam and Gansey and Calla sprinting through the brush echoes behind him and Blue’s voice resonates from somewhere in the trees, closer with every call-and-response pair.

Finally, she appears stumbling at the top of a ridge, covered in rock dust but decidedly not squished in a cave collapse. Behind her is the Gray Man, of all people, ruffled-looking and supporting Maura Sargent, and behind her trails a man Ronan’s never seen before.

Ronan helps Blue down and hands her off to Gansey, noting the bruise blossoming across her forehead and the stiff way she holds her shoulder and ankle, and the white-knuckle grip around her bloody switchblade. Maura slides down next, looking disoriented and scraped up, followed by the tall man who’s bleeding from a shoulder wound, and finally the Gray Man with bruising around his neck.

“Artemus,” Calla says coldly, stripping off her jacket and passing it to the tall man. Artemus accepts it and presses it to his bleeding shoulder. Then she slides herself under Maura’s arm and the eight of them hobble back to the cave. Ronan watches as Blue wobbles on her feet and almost falls, but she brushes off Gansey’s steadying hand.

“What happened?” Ronan mutters, glancing at the Gray Man.

“Shock,” the Gray Man rasps. It sounds like he’s having difficulty speaking. “I’d imagine. Greenmantle was there.”

“Fucker,” Ronan spits. “Where is he now?”

The Gray Man shrugs. “Ran off. His wife and goons are still underground.”

Ronan nods. He knows what that means.

Blue crumples into a mostly-upright sitting position when they reach the cave, and Maura falls next to her, crushing Blue against her chest and mumbling into her hair. Artemus props himself against a tree woozily.

“What happened?” Calla asks, her gaze directed at Blue.

Blue blinks slowly. “I—the cavern—the third sleeper—and then Piper Greenmantle showed up, and—“ She starts to shake, violently, and then disentangles herself from Maura’s embrace just in time to crawl to the nearest tree and vomit spectacularly into the bushes.

“She’s in shock,” Calla says as Gansey and Adam trip over themselves to rush to Blue’s side. “We need to get her home; Jimi can take care of her. And him,” she adds, jerking her head at Artemus, still bleeding out against a tree.

“Who the hell is this guy, anyway?” Ronan asks. The man looks too much like Gwenllian’s shifty-eyed insanity to be trustworthy.

“Blue’s father,” Calla spits in the same tone of voice she’d use to describe a piece of dog shit she just stepped in. “Get them out of here.”

“I’ll take them,” Gansey says immediately, sliding a tender arm around Blue as though he’s going to carry her under his arm.

“No,” Ronan and Calla say at the same time.

“You need to stay here, and Maura and Mr. Gray are going to tell you and Adam every detail about the third sleeper that they can remember while we walk back,” Calla says.

“I’ll take them back to the house,” Ronan mutters, and when Gansey tries to protest, Ronan cuts him off with a _“Can it,_ Dick, and just think for a second about the odds of your shitbox-on-wheels not breaking down halfway back to town and stranding all three of you with no way of getting help. I’d even take the Hondayota over your piece of shit right now.”

“You need to leave now, Ronan,” the Gray Man says. “Mr, ah, _Artemus_ is in rather dire need of medical aid.”

“No hospitals,” Calla says firmly. “Too many questions. Jimi and Orla can patch him up.”

Adam nods in understanding. Gansey looks desperately unhappy, but he gives Blue’s shoulder a comforting pat and moves back to let her stand.

“C’mon, Maggot,” Ronan says, offering Blue a hand so she can stand. She gets about halfway there before her knees give out and Ronan has to grab for her wrist to keep her from landing hard on her ass. She’s shaking hard and her teeth are chattering. Ronan knows the feeling—he’s woken up from nightmares on the tail ends of adrenaline highs, only to crash hard as soon as he’s conscious. There are mornings when he can’t move for hours without tripping over his own feet.

He slides an arm under her knees and picks her up, adjusting his grip so Blue’s arms circle his neck, and starts walking without another word.

“Do you need help?” Adam asks, still kneeling with his hands limp in his lap.

“No, not with this pipsqueak,” Ronan tells him, even though he knows that’s not what Adam meant.

Artemus is upright enough that he can walk, which Ronan has to admit is impressive, since his shoulder is still oozing blood. Blue shivers violently enough that Ronan can hear her teeth chatter. She looks a little like she did after the mirror lake visions—empty, like her mind has retreated to some dark, thorny place and left her body behind. She looks like Adam when he’s scrying.

Then, as the BMW comes into sight and Matthew waves in greeting, Blue blinks slowly. “Thanks,” she croaks, and then, as an afterthought, “shitbag.”

“Maggot,” Ronan acknowledges, and tucks her into the BMW’s passenger seat after Matthew opens the door.

Matthew crawls into the back with Artemus, pulling the grease rag out from under the driver’s seat and applying even more pressure to Artemus’s shoulder. Ronan cranks the heat and flips on Blue’s seat heater. He shrugs his jacket off and tosses it at her; as she pokes her arms through the sleeves, he opens the glove box and removes an old Altoids tin. When Blue opens it, the stench of blood, sweat and vomit is replaced by a sharp minty smell.

Silently, Blue places a mint leaf on her tongue, and then Ronan hits the gas.

\---

Ronan comes squealing to a halt outside 300 Fox Way, and immediately the front door bursts open as two of Blue’s relatives/friends/housemates—Orla and Jimi, Ronan thinks—tumble out onto the sidewalk. He hardly recognizes Orla without her skyscraper heels and neon-bright makeup. Ronan slams the driver’s side door shut with enough force to shake the car behind him as he climbs out. Matthew slides out of the back, then Artemus, who Jimi and Orla immediately sweep into the house, Matthew scuttling close behind.

Any normal human would’ve passed out from blood loss by now, Ronan thinks, but at the moment he can think of more pressing issues. At least he has experience getting bloodstains out of his upholstery.

He opens Blue’s door and helps her crawl out. Her legs are still shaking, but this time when she puts her left foot down, she cries out and grabs for something to keep her balance—that something being Ronan’s shoulder, but he’s steady enough to keep them both off the ground. Her ankle is bruising spectacularly and swollen to the size of an orange, and if she hasn’t at least sprained it, Ronan’s going to eat one of Gansey’s Glendower books. Blue hisses when Ronan slings her arm over his shoulder—her shoulder isn’t dislocated, but she’s done something unpleasant to it—but she lets him help her limp up the porch steps and into the house.

Ronan can see into a corner of the kitchen from the front hall, where Orla is bent over Artemus with a sterilized needle and thread. Jimi glances up from whatever herbs she’s grinding and says, “Put her in bed upstairs, we’ll be there in a minute.”

He has to carry Blue to the second floor, because the staircase is too narrow for them to limp side-by-side. Her bedroom is tiny and oddly decorated and very Blue-ish. Ronan sets her down and she starts to burrow into her pile of blankets, but he tells her, “Wait. You keep athletic tape around here?”

Through chattering teeth, Blue says, “Bathroom. T-to your left.”

He finds the tape in the cabinet over the sink. There’s no foam wrap to be found, but he spots a horribly ripped pair of tights in Blue’s trash and cuts off one of the feet with her bloodied switchblade. She slides the severed stocking over her foot with a wince and does her best to hold still while Ronan wraps her ankle.

“Least it won’t stick too bad when you take it off,” he mutters. “Shit takes skin with it. Now you can’t fuck it up more until someone looks at it.”

Blue swings her legs up into bed and yanks the covers over her body. She’s crashing hard, her eyes already shutting, but before he leaves she mumbles, “Ronan? Thank you.”

“Whatever,” he says, although not angrily, and shuts the door.

\---

The Pig stutters to a painful stop behind Ronan’s BMW almost half an hour later, probably because Gansey gives two shits about speed limits. Calla, Maura and the Gray Man unfold themselves from the backseat and rush straight into the house.

Ronan’s still hunched over on the porch step when Gansey climbs out, looking tired and much, much older than he should. “Blue’s upstairs,” Ronan tells him. “Probably asleep. She’ll be fine.”

“Thank you,” Gansey says, and trudges past to follow the others.

Adam gets out of the Pig last. He doesn’t look as tired or as worried as Gansey or the others, which Ronan should find more disturbing than he does. Adam sinks down to sit on the step next to Ronan. “What happened?” Adam asks.

Ronan thinks. It’s a pretty open-ended question but he thinks he knows what Adam is really asking. “The lake showed us stuff. Visions.”

“What kind?”

“The kind we didn’t want to see.” Ronan looks at Adam out of the corner of his eyes, and finds Adam looking back at him.

“I’m sorry.”

Ronan shrugs. “I see shit I don’t want to all the time. I can handle it.”

“And Blue handled it?”

Ronan turns to stare back at Adam, who for once doesn’t avoid his gaze. It’s refreshing. “I made sure she didn’t have to.”

Adam nods. It’s odd, because they have many things in common, but Blue hasn’t been one of them until recently. Honestly, she still isn’t. Adam likes Blue, Blue doesn’t like Adam, at least not the same way. Ronan doesn’t like Blue, except he does, but not that way, and as far as Blue’s attitude towards Ronan…well. It’s all a work in progress.

It’s amazing, Ronan thinks, because before Blue showed up in their lives everything was relatively simple, if not great all the time. Then she walked into their lives and everyone’s affections got tangled up like so much string.

\---

Ronan drives Adam back to St. Agnes, after things start to settle down. When they leave 300 Fox Way, Gansey and the Gray Man are talking in low voices in the kitchen with Calla, who is talking in a not-low voice. Artemus has passed out on the reading room couch, shoulder bandaged thickly. Maura is asleep upstairs, and Gwenllian’s nonsensical songs are reverberating down from the attic. He’s not sure when she vanished from their party back in Cabeswater, but she turned up at 300 Fox Way a few hours after Gansey, barefoot and humming happily, so no one is too concerned. It wouldn’t be the first time Henrietta’s highways had seen crazy hitchhikers.

Matthew is sitting in the backseat, sleeping, so Adam and Ronan don’t talk on the way to the church. Ronan parks at the curb, and before he gets out Adam reaches over and squeezes Ronan’s arm.

Once Adam has vanished inside, Ronan drives back to Monmouth. He climbs out and pokes Matthew with cold fingers. Blue’s probably still wearing his jacket. “Wake up, kiddo,” he says, “you can stay here tonight, okay?”

Matthew blinks slowly awake and crawls out of the car like his limbs are made of lead. Ronan leads him upstairs and into his room with a solemn warning not to touch anything, which Matthew waves off and Ronan follows up with a _seriously, Matthew, especially not that mask, it’s dangerous_ and Matthew acknowledges with a grunt followed by a snore.

Ronan heads back to 300 Fox Way. When he gets there, Calla and the Gray Man have vanished, probably upstairs, and Gansey is sleeping on the reading room floor with a throw pillow under his head and his glasses crooked on his face.

Ronan sets Gansey’s glasses on the side table, steals a blanket from Artemus to drape over Gansey, then leaves to drive around until morning, or the adrenaline leaves his system. Whichever comes first.

\---

Ronan gets a text from Gansey the next morning saying that he’s driving Blue to the hospital, because she can’t walk on her ankle. Maura calls him a couple of hours later—he never gave her his number, but between Gansey and her psychic powers he’s not surprised she has it—to tell him that the doctors found a fracture and she’ll be in an ankle boot for the next six weeks.

Ronan passes the news on to Adam when he gets to St. Agnes. “Oh, Blue’ll be thrilled about _that,”_ Adam says.

Ronan thinks about spitfire Blue Sargent confined to an ankle brace and a pair of crutches. At least the crutches provide her with new weapons to use on people who piss her off. He makes a mental note to keep a five foot minimum distance between them until she can walk on her own.

Gansey shows up later that afternoon long enough to take a shower and collapse face-first into his bed. Nobody hears from Blue for the rest of the day—she’s presumably either still hospitalized or at home with Maura. Ronan can’t blame her. There are days when he doesn’t want to leave Cabeswater for fear that when he comes back no one will be waiting for him.

\---

Ronan wakes from a dream sometime the next afternoon to a room full of rock dust and crushed flowers, and the sound of voices out on Monmouth’s main floor. He finds Blue sitting on Gansey’s bed, her left ankle propped up on a pile of wadded-up blankets and squished pillows, her right leg dangling over the side of the bed. Gansey is sitting on the floor with his head propped against her thigh. They’re each holding a crutch, and Blue is fashioning cloth flowers out of scraps of fabric and floral wire while Gansey fastens them to the metal of her crutches.

“Where’s Noah?” Ronan asks, because he’s the one most likely to appear whenever Blue is around. He never asks about Adam anymore because the answer is always going to be _at work._

“Not here,” Gansey says, and not in a way that allows for the possibility of Noah being here-but-somewhere-else.

“Also, how the hell did you get up here, Cripple?” Ronan demands, turning to Blue, who immediately glares at him. “There’s like three flights of stairs between the parking lot and here.”

“Since when has Jane ever allowed little things like the laws of Physics to deter her?” Gansey answers again, but he doesn’t sound much happier than he did when he was talking about Noah disappearing.

“I crawled up,” Blue says, not looking up. “It’s not that far.”

Gansey gives Ronan a look like, _Can you believe her?_ Ronan thinks she sounds pretty sensible, though, and Gansey’s frustration is overlaid with fondness. The kind of fondness, Ronan thinks with a twist of jealousy, that used to be reserved for him.

But Ronan hasn’t been bothered by jealousy for a while now, and it passes quickly. He heads for Monmouth’s door, because Gansey and Blue are obviously not in the mood for company, but when he yanks it open he nearly hits Adam in the face with the door.

“Parrish,” Ronan says. “No cars to play with in your shop?”

“My shift just ended,” Adam says. “I need to talk to you.” He gently slides past Ronan and heads straight for Ronan’s room, waving politely to Gansey and Blue as he goes.

“What if I had plans?” Ronan gripes, shutting the door and following Adam.

“The odds of your plans being either legal or productive are slim,” Adam says. “Come on, this is important.”

Ronan follows him in and pulls the door shut. “What do you want, Parrish,” he says. It’s not really a question.

Adam turns. The old Adam, the Adam who didn’t sell himself to Cabeswater, would’ve crossed his arms and pulled his shoulders up to his ears. This Adam levels his gaze at Ronan and leaves his hands at his sides. “I want to know what you saw in the mirror lake. I know you’d be happy to bottle up all of your emotions and leave them to ferment for a decade, but it’s really better if you tell someone.”

“Why do _you_ care?” Ronan’s not angry, and he doesn’t put a defensive tone in his voice.

“Because I care about you,” Adam says plainly. “And I know you, and I know that when you _see shit you don’t want to see_ something’s wrong.”

“Since you _care,”_ Ronan spits, “I saw the mangled corpse of my dearly departed father—you know, the one who got murdered in my driveway because a hitman who lives two blocks away beat him to death while looking for me. This was before the hitman starting shacking up with your ex-girlfriend’s mother, if you were wondering.”

His attempts to guilt Adam into silence aren’t nearly as successful as they usually are on Gansey. Adam’s blank look just shifts to a slightly more disapproving look. “Ronan.”

“What,” Ronan deadpans.

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” Adam says, “because I was worried, and Gansey was worried, and so far Blue hasn’t really been okay.”

“She broke her goddamn ankle and almost pulled her shoulder out of her socket, Parrish,” Ronan snaps.

“She’s been having nightmares,” Adam says. “It would’ve been obvious even if Maura hadn’t mentioned it. I know you’ve noticed.”

“I haven’t been having nightmares,” Ronan says. Technically true. He can’t remember them anyway.

Adam looks at him. Okay, so considering what they’ve spent the last several months fighting, Ronan’s not surprised that he can’t get away with that.

“About anything in the lake,” he amends. “Nothing I haven’t been having for months. I’m fine.”

“You’re not,” Adam says. “It’s okay, though.”

“You ever think about listening to yourself sometimes?” Ronan asks.

Adam frowns, but he lifts a hand to squeeze Ronan’s forearm. Ronan closes his eyes for a moment, and when he opens them Adam has let himself out.

Ronan stomps back out into the main area of Monmouth and falls face-first on Gansey’s bed, burying his face in a pillow next to Blue and sprawling out as obnoxiously as he can. Blue just tugs another fabric scrap from under his hip, but she pauses to touch his shoulder, almost reassuringly.

“Let’s get dinner,” Blue says suddenly. Ronan turns his head enough to watch Gansey stand and help Blue balance on her crutches, now festooned in fabric flora, and then look expectantly at Ronan, who sighs and rolls out of bed. He doesn’t want to eat. He wants to drive to the Barns, or get drunk, or sleep for a week, or visit his mom, or visit Adam. He thinks he knows now why Adam always grinds his teeth when someone asks what he wants. Ronan wants so much.

“Nino’s?” Gansey asks, even though it’s not really a suggestion. “We can stop at Adam’s on the way and ask if he wants to come.”

Ronan _especially_ doesn’t want pizza. “Sure,” he grunts. He shoots a glance at Blue, who tries her best to disguise the disgusted wrinkle of her nose. Pizza probably doesn’t sound that appetizing to her either, not when she practically breathes it.

“Excellent,” Gansey says. “Noah! Are you coming?”

Noah shimmers into existence a few feet away. “I won’t eat,” he says, which is a yes. Ronan’s not even surprised at this point that Gansey can order Noah into being.

Ronan rattles down Monmouth’s staircase fast enough that he’s in genuine danger of tripping and cracking his head open, but he doesn’t. He reaches the bottom fast enough to watch Blue brush Gansey’s supportive arm off and scoot down the stairs on her butt, bad leg extended straight out and both crutches clenched in one of her hands. Gansey follows right behind, one hand half-extended.

They stop at St. Agnes, where Adam grumps about it being a school night but squeezes himself into the backseat with Ronan and Noah, because Blue and her crutches and boot can’t fit. At Nino’s a bunch of Blue’s coworkers give her well-wishes and one of them sneaks a free basket of garlic bread to their table. Noah tickles Blue’s chin with a straw wrapper and makes her giggle, and Gansey almost knocks over his drink twice because his hands are flailing while he talks, and Adam presses his ankle against Ronan’s under the table and they end up playing footsie like a couple of jackasses, all while Adam bites his lip to hold back laughter and Ronan’s mouth twitches like it wants to betray him with a smile.

It’s not the Barns, and Adam’s acidic snark and Blue’s take-no-shit tone are the farthest things in the world from Ronan’s beatific mother. It’s still pretty okay, though.

Later, when Adam and Blue have gone home and Noah has fizzled into nothingness, Gansey and Ronan sit in the middle of Gansey’s miniature Henrietta and play with Chainsaw, who caws happily and hops down Main Street, rearranging scraps of foil that Ronan and Gansey drop for her. It’s easy to forget, here, that tomorrow is Monday and Monday means classes and when he closes his eyes Ronan will probably see his father’s skeleton smile turn into Kavinsky’s. Here it’s just Ronan and his bird and Gansey and shared insomnia, and the knowledge that Ronan is with the person (and bird) who knows him best in the world, hands down. It’s comforting, for once, instead of irritating.

“You and Adam,” Gansey says suddenly. “I can honestly say I never envisioned you two getting along quite this well.”

“Didn’t know you were a psychic,” Ronan mutters, leaning down to blow on Chainsaw’s foil pattern and scatter the pieces, much to her irritation.

“I’m not,” Gansey says. “Speaking of, you and Blue seem to be on your way to actually liking each other.”

“Lies and slander,” Ronan says. “Maggot and I are always going to fight with each other.”

“That’s what I said,” Gansey says. “You and Adam, though. You’re lucky.”

Ronan looks up from where Chainsaw is pecking at the floor and says, “Lucky?”

“You know what I mean, Lynch, don’t play stupid.” Gansey chews at his lip. Ronan does know. The only curse that Adam has is self-inflicted and mostly nonfatal. The only thing keeping anyone from kissing Adam is cowardice.

“It’s too fucking early for riddles, Dick,” Ronan says. “Some of us need our beauty sleep. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.” He rolls to his feet and whistles for Chainsaw, who swoops past and settles into her cage.

Ronan slams his bedroom door so hard that he almost misses Gansey’s “Goodnight.”

\---

Ronan waits outside Mountain View as most of the teenage population of Henrietta dashes for freedom, and one member of the teenage population crutches. Blue spots him waiting across the street and hobbles over to him.

“Gansey’s meeting us at the library,” he tells her. “Parrish had to drop his shit at home, so we’re picking him up.”

“No Cabeswater visits?” Blue asks, maneuvering around to the BMW’s passenger door and studiously ignoring her classmates’ stares.

“Not for a while,” Ronan says. “Gansey got freaked the fuck out. We’ll go back in a few weeks.”

“You mean, in a few weeks when I conveniently get this boot taken off?” Blue says, eyebrow quirked.

Ronan bares his teeth. “Coincidence.”

“Gansey and I are going to have _words,”_ she snaps, and falls inelegantly into her seat. Ronan takes her crutches from her and chucks them in the backseat. When he gets back in the driver’s seat, Blue is fiddling with the radio knob.

“Don’t change my music, Maggot,” he warns.

“Stuff it, Lynch,” she returns, and settles on a college station that’s playing a bunch of plucky indie shit.

Ronan rolls his eyes and puts the car in drive. Blue digs in his glove box and pulls out the tin of mint leaves, popping one in her mouth and chewing.

**Author's Note:**

> yep, this fic left a bunch of loose threads and had an unsatisfying ending. welcome to life.


End file.
